Who needs a trashy magazine when you could listen to these?
I am, to all intents and purposes, a grown woman, and yet the need to Keep Up With The Kardashians, the Middletons, the Reynolds-Livelys and more is a siren call I can’t quite resist. Why can’t I quit you, blind gossip items and trashy magazines?
My thirst for celebrity ‘news’ used to be quenched by weekly magazines and mindless scrolling through my newsfeed, but I’ve since learnt a better, more entertaining way to consume my A-list anecdotes: Podcasts. A photographer friend of mine turned me onto This Week Had Me Like, the sadly cancelled deep dive into the craziest, wackiest celebrity news of the week by comedian Caroline Goldfarb of @officialseanpenn and thus my obsession began.
I estimate that I’m subscribed to about 13 celebrity news podcasts and I voraciously listen to them all, on my commute, in the shower, while cooking dinner, in the evenings when I’m too exhausted to read a book and can’t face yet another Netflix or Stan binge.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to recommend you listen to a baker’s dozen worth of podcasts. I’ve culled it down to a neat six.
This Week Had Me Like
Yes, this podcast is cancelled, but it is one of the original celebrity commentary recordings and still one of the best. Plus, you can still listen to all the archives like I do when I want a really good belly laugh, and even though the news might be outdated, it’s no less hilarious.
Founded in February 2016 by actress Sarah Ramos and her best friend, comedian Caroline Goldfarb behind viral meme account @officialseanpenn, This Week Had Me Like is an expletive-strewn, bawdy, bloody hilarious romp through the world of celebrity news through segments like wacky endorsements – like Katie Holmes affiliation with Quaker Oats’ Oattober awareness campaign – and, my favourite, ‘Spotlight But For This’.
It’s in that segment that Goldfarb does her best investigative work, diving deep into a strange celebrity occurrence, such as an ice cream gifting suite at the Independent Spirit Awards or Lindsay Lohan’s bizarre Instagram posts, and really getting to the heart of the story. The episodes go for more than an hour, so they’re a commitment, but trust me, you’ll never laugh so hard in your life. RIP, This Week Had Me Like.
Who? Weekly
I discovered Who? Weekly after its co-host Lindsey Weber had a guest appearance on This Week Had Me Like. Weber was incredibly witty, delivering biting commentary about celebrity news, so when she plugged her own podcast I hit subscribe and never looked back.
This podcast, co-hosted by Bobby Finger, is an investigation of the ‘whos’ and ‘thems’ of the celebrity world: Whos being the celebrities that nobody knows, the Emily Ratajkowskis and Chloe Grace Moretzes of this world, while Thems are the big names, think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Their favourite Whos are Rita Ora and Armand ‘Armie’ Hammer, and any episode that discusses either of those A-lister’s antics is a favourite.
There are two episodes every week, one a rundown of the week’s best stories and the second a call-in episode, where readers dial up and ask who a certain celebrity is. Hot tip: The call-in episodes are next level good. I once burst into tears laughing, listening to a call-in episode about Ronan Farrow tweeting about being stalked by paparazzi at Los Angeles airport. Trust me, this podcast is gold.
Dirtcast
The podcast world sometimes feels like one interlinked chain. Finger, the co-host of Who? Weekly is also the co-host of Dirtcast, Jezebel‘s dirty, sexy podcast about celebrity gossip. Where Who? Weekly‘s episodes are a bingeable 30 minutes long, Dirtcast runs for over an hour, featuring a special guest commenting on how the celebrity gossip industry sausage is made, so to speak. The best episode is the one about Scientology – you will never look at Elizabeth Moss, a low-key Scientologist – in the same way again and the episode on celebrity feuds, because who doesn’t love a longterm A-lister shade-fest?
In The Limelight
Hosted by Josh Duboff and Julie Miller, Vanity Fair‘s In The Limelight is a lighter, less cutting celebrity podcast than Jezebel‘s Dirtcast. This is for those who like their trashy gossip light and frothy as opposed to Real Housewives-level bitchy. (There is a season for everything).
In The Limelight focusses on beloved celebs, people like Beyonce, Kate and Pippa Middleton – their breakdown of Pippa’s wedding is a must-listen – Meghan Markle and Gwyneth Paltrow. If you only download one episode, make sure that it’s the one where Josh and Julie talk about their near run-in with Jay-Z and Chris Martin, dining at a swanky Los Angeles restaurant while Leonardo DiCaprio and Nina Agdal were at the table next door.
You Must Remember This
Enough of these modern day social media celebrities! You Must Remember This, a gorgeous podcast by Hollywood historian Karina Longworth, focusses on the gossip from ages of old. Launched in 2014, each series is centred on a particular theme. At the moment, Longworth is investigating the ‘Dead Blondes’ of Hollywood’s golden age – Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and Jayne Mansfield – while in previous series she’s looked into the Joan Crawford and Bette Davis feud that now serves as the subject of Ryan Murphy’s Feud and the reality of MGM’s infamous studio system in the ’30s and ’40s.
Page Seven
A riff on celebrity.land‘s iconic Page Six gossip column, Page Seven is hosted by comedians Jackie Zebrowksi, Molly Knefel and Marcus Parks and is a no-holds barred approach to trashy news. They are not afraid to speak the truth on pop culture, revealing which celebs have STIs, gambling problems and drug addictions and discussing every possible NSFW rumour you could possibly need answered about Hollywood’s best and brightest.
Hannah-Rose Yee is whimn’s entertainment editor which basically means she gets to binge-watch TV, road-test crazy new food hybrids, sniff out the latest travel trends and interview awesome startup founders for a living. She will write for donuts and bootleg copies of the next Donna Tartt or Daniel Silva, because she contains multitudes. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
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